Yesterday (well including also the wee hours of today) was a great progress day, two things got me glued and unavailable to get to sleep.
First of is Storm of Swords, being book number three of the epic saga of genius George R.R. Martin “A song of Ice and Fire”. I’m really enjoying this series as you’ll enjoy a fine wine, little sips and hoping it will never end.
The second one was Before the Watchmen Vol.1, which are prequels to the masterpiece by Alan Moore The Watchmen, they are great fun and where written and drawn by the industry elite, but, lack a bit of scope of the original source material. To be fair is a pretty difficult act to follow. This particular volume explores the story of the original Nite Owl and the Minutemen, the first jobs of Silk Spectre and my favorite character Rorschach narrating one of his biggest mistakes.
The day finished with 280 pages and a total of 8,611 pages for year seven.
Between life itself and having a new member in my family, time has the tendency to evaporate.
In the reading front my progress has been decent (given the circumstances) ,but not to my complete satisfaction.
A couple of weeks back we had the opportunity to take a small road trip to the city of Casas Grandes ( about 170 miles southwest from Ciudad Juarez, my hometown) and it gave me a chance to reconnect, to unwind and refocused.
Being surrounded by the mighty desert and exploring the ruins of the majestic lost city of Paquime with my beloved wife and my amazing kids This will always have a positive effect on my mood. And to top it off staying in a charming B & B, well that just made this that much more special.
A shot from the museum in PaquimeA shot from an interior garden in the museum of PaquimeA scale model depicting how Paquime was originally build.An interior courtyard in the museum of Paquime.The interior patio from the B&B “Las Guacamayas”A shot of the rooms at the B&B “Las Guacamayas”A shot of the interior Patio at the B&B “Las Guacamayas”
This trip got me thinking about my reading goal and the direction of this blog.
It gave me the idea of starting a couple of new sections.
The first one I’m going to call it “Ambulat” which is a derivation of a greek word that means “to walk”. It’s main purpose is creating a space to share my little road trips around my region, and eventually, here’s to hoping,around the world.
The second one I’m going to call it “200 day march” starting on march 28 I have exactly 200 days left until the end of the seventh year of this project. The idea is to push myself and reach the gargantuan task of reading 50,000 pages. Wish me luck. This will be follow by daily progress entry.
So to catch up to speed here are some quick numbers
Total Pages : 157,323 pages
For year seven : 8,235 pages down 41,765 pages to go
Days left until the end of Lost in a Million Pages: 5,909 days
As of now I’m working on this three bad boys, pretty awesome each in their own accord.
I have a long weekend ahead, that only can mean one thing, BINGE READING!!!!
So finally my books have what I hope will be their final home. After months of trying to make up my mind I finally got around to installing some shelfs that cover the room from one end to the other.
Also, yesterday will have been H.P. Lovecraft 124th birthday, here is some of his works collected in a nice little group of pocket-books.
It has been a crazy year, first of all my family grew by one member as my daughter Carolina was born on May 29.
My reading has been good, yes just good not great as I will hope it to be.
So catch up to speed here come the cold hard numbers.
I’m at 147,248 of total pages.
For this year, the sixth of this crazy project, my total page count is at 19,321 pages.
I have read a total of 22 books and right now I’m working on two amazing books. A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin and Los años de peregrinación del chico sin color by Haruki Murakami.
The Beatles once sang “There are places I remember ..” and here in Juarez there are places all over the city which once were full of life and which e hold memories of others times, of past fiestas, past loves, but are now abandoned often only shells of their former selves. In an effort to explore these “no lugares” and the issue of memory and, for that matter, what is important in a cityscape, as well as a desire to resuscitate at least in memory these places and the people who live there, a group of artists worked long and hard giving workshops in a variety of artistic disciplines to people in order to let them record, recollect and revive in a certain way these areas which still hold memories of a time that was. The fruit of these months of work were on display Friday night at the Centro…
So this year started pretty good, my reading has been more that great, both in my progress and the quality of the material I’m reading.
So far I have read 11 amazing books. And the list goes as followed:
Diario de una buena vecina by Doris Lessing
Frankenstein: Prodigal Son by Dean Koontz
El llano en llamas by Juan Rulfo
‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
El viejo y el mar by Ernest Hemingway
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Las ventajas de ser invisible by Stephen Chbosky
My First Summer in Sierra by John Muir
Call of the Wild by Jack London
Soy Leyenda by Richard Matheson
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
So that’s 11 books down, 51 to go for this year.
The other thing I have been working on is a writing workshop focusing on making tales about my home town of Ciudad Juarez . The workshop consist of 15 artists, a friend who gives the Sunday sessions and myself.
I’m more that thrilled to be sharing my love for books and writing.
For this week session we will be discussing the great works of Carlos Fuentes and Alan Moore, and their take on the city as a living and breathing thing.
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